A Guide to Dismantling the Edifice of Lies on the Ukraine
by Hans Modlich
From Hero to Zero in 40 odd minutes in the Oval Office, Vladamir Zelensky flamed out in front of the entire world’s cameras. He proved true once again the famous Henry Kissinger adage, that to be America’s enemy is dangerous, but to be America’s friend is fatal!
Clamouring for security guarantees that he should have known he would not get, Zelensky ended up in a shouting match with his master over the “killer and terrorist Putin”. In a bizarre twist Trump ended up accusing him of “gambling with World War III” and then unceremoniously tossed him out of the White House. Three days later Trump suspended the flow of satellite and AWAC intelligence and paused supplies to the embattled Ukrainian military.
Aaron Mate in his March 2nd post stated; “For panicked cheerleaders of the proxy war against Russia, the consensus view is that Trump has betrayed a stalwart US ally, sided with an enemy in Moscow, and may have even deliberately triggered the clash to serve his treacherous agenda.”
Facing imminent defeat in a war he claims that would never have started under his watch, Trump is determined not to have his tenure tarnished with this major hegemonic defeat. Even if that meant throwing Zelensky under the bus -- even if it means exploding the edifice of lies built up under Biden and repeated in lockstep by the European and Canadian vassal governments.
Does Trump see Putin as a kindred billionaire, autocrat, ready to make a deal? Or has he now abandoned the longstanding “cold-war-victor” doctrine whereby the NATO expansion to Georgia and Ukraine became an article of faith? Supporting this change in thinking is Marco Rubio’s March 6th clear characterization of the war on Fox News as a “proxy war between nuclear powers USA and Russia”
Unlike all his Democratic predecessors, is Trump prepared to accept the legitimacy of Russia’s concern for her own sphere of influence and security? The MAGA chief had already made it unmistakenly clear two weeks earlier, by putting two key concessions on the negotiating table in Riad, firstly no NATO membership - period, and secondly territorial concessions of the Russian occupied Donbas territories who were and are historically Russian language speakers.
Socialists are justifiably skeptical of Trumps motives, especially given his unqualified support of Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza, and now his full-frontal attack on Canada’s economy and its sovereign survival.
Background to the Proxy War
All the more we do owe Ukrainians an in-depth examination of the origins and background behind this tragic proxy war -- paid for by hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides. Lives, it turns out that might well have been spared but for US hubris and hegemonic miscalculations.
Ivan Katchanovski, Professor of Sociology at the University of Ottawa, in my opinion is the world’s leading authority on post-Soviet developments in Ukraine. He has recently presented an exhaustive academic paper The Russia-Ukraine War, its Nature, and Origins at the 66th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association in Chicago, March 2 - March 5, 2025 .
Katchanovski’s most singular contribution is his meticulous exposure of the false-flag February 2014 right wing coup against the NATO neutral government of Victor Yanukovich – the event which triggered the eight-year civil war in this “cleft country” as Prof. Katchanovski documents in an open-access book titled The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: The Mass Killing that Changed the World. It can be downloaded from this website .
In 2022, just two weeks into the start of Putin’s ‘Special Operation’ - in the Istanbul talks, Ukrainian and Russian delegations were within a hair’s breadth of reaching a peace settlement, agreeing both on neutrality and regional autonomy for the Donbas and ceding Crimea to Russia. Zelensky’s top delegate Olexiy Arestovich has testified to the success of these negotiations, so close that the champagne corks were already popped and only the meeting date between Putin and Zelensky had yet to be settled.
David Arakhamia, then Zelensky’s right hand man, as well as Israeli ex-PM Neftali Bennet had earlier corroborated these astonishing revelations – which were totally withheld by Western media at the time, jointly with the crucial fact that the Americans and their envoy British PM Boris Johnson had torpedoed what could well have been an early ending to this tragic and unnecessary war.
So argues Jeffrey Sachs, who was also a witness to the Istanbul talks. Professor Sachs is a top tier economist and advisor to leaders of the post-Soviet governments, beginning with Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine as well as pre- and post- Soviet Russia. He details his personal interventions with the major players prior to outbreak of war in a lengthy and highly informative lecture late this February before an EU Parliamentary Foreign Policy subcommittee. Predictably Sachs’ warnings again went unheard and unheeded by the European political-media chorus – even in the wake of Trump’s radical about-face on Zelensky.
I strongly recommend listening to Jeffrey’s profound insights yourself. His address was titled Why America Caused the Ukraine War: Professor Jeffrey Sachs Makes Fiery Speech At EU Parliament. It should also be given at ours!
What does this mean for Canada?
In Canada we are singularly well equipped to examine Ukraine’s background because we are home to the world’s largest Ukrainian diaspora, not counting the recent wave of 1.25 million Ukrainians who have been displaced to Germany. Canadian Ukrainians have fought their own internal Cold War. Many, such as Tribune Editor John Boyd, only broke with the Communist Party after the 1968 Prague Spring. On the other side, the Yaroslav Hunka episode brought to light the many former Nazis who formed the backbone of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) with its many tentacles into past and present governments.
Chrystia Freeland is heir and personification of this renewed Cold War hysteria and was instrumental in selling the big lie of the “unprovoked attack” on western values and freedoms. Family Ties by Peter McFarlane makes for a useful read in this regard.
Canada’s most courageous truth seeker on Ukraine is Dimitri Lascaris. Early in the war he personally visited Russia and Crimea at his own expense and brought us face to face with the strategic importance of Sevastopol, Russia’s key Black Sea naval base. In his Reason2Resist blog Dimitri introduces us to key sources and topics. One such guest is John Helmer, answering the question Why do the British Elite hate the Russians so much? Besides important statistical and strategic assessments Helmer also reflects on his own experience working with then G&M editor Chrystia Freeland.
How will the Ukraine debacle play in the upcoming federal elections? Will the Trump peace initiative be swept under the rug in an orgy of anti-Trump Canadian nationalism by all five party leaders?
Socialists will have our work cut out to bring the anti-war issues into the campaign as there will be an unprecedented amount of flag waving.
Let’s not let them get away with using the Maple leaf as a fig leaf to cover up their shameless complicity in Biden’s failed proxy war on Russia.
Humanity needs to fight climate change not World War III. Demand that we cancel our purchase of F-35 fighter jets, build water bombers instead, icebreakers instead of destroyers, and abandon our entrapment in NORAD and NATO.